Maya's 3rd 500 words

       In 1922, just a couple of years before he was rendered incapable of finishing The Trial, Kafka suffered a nervous breakdown. Though he had already experienced something similar to this when he was asked to take over his family’s asbestos factory ten years earlier, this second “breakdown” occured while Kafka was writing The Trial. Therefore, this incident might have had a more direct correlation and greater influence over Kafka as he wrote the novel. In a diary entry he wrote on January 16, 1922, he delineates the nature of his breakdown. Kafka writes, “One can interpret the event in two ways, and both are probably correct simultaneously”. The first “interpretation” he explains details Kafka experiencing an “impossibility to sleep, impossibility to be awake, [and an] impossibility to endure life [or] life’s sequentiality”. This sensation that Kafka describes as being in some form of limbo can be compared to the style The Trial is written in. Many times, the situations within the novel are presented in a manner that resembles a dream, or like Josef K. is also experiencing an inability to discern whether he is awake or asleep. This particular style is implemented right from the beginning. When Josef K. is first arrested, the officers sent to arrest him barge into his house and essentially hold him hostage. They do not tell him the crime he supposedly has committed; all they tell him is that he is under arrest and they refuse to answer any other questions. This scene, at least to a reader who lives in a country with a developed judicial system, seems unrealistic and almost like a bad dream. Every time K. visits the court house, the descriptions of his surroundings are almost surreal. While K. waits to retrieve some documents, the air around him becomes heavy and unbreathable out of nowhere. This situation lacks realism and sustains the “limbo-esque” atmosphere that Kafka illustrates in his diary entry. 

       The second “interpretation” that Kafka offers is the more existential of the two. Kafka describes an ongoing “chase” between himself and his “inner clock” that “rushes in a ... demonic [manner]”. Kafka discloses that racing against his internal clock will more than likely lead to his going insane. He says, “The chase goes through me and tears me apart”. What Kafka is describing in his second interpretation creates a certain tension, a tension that arises when chasing after an intangible object such as time. The tension only builds because “the chase” will persist. It can be argued that Kafka expressed these sentiments further through The Trial. Josef K. spends the entire story chasing after a concept: his innocence. He had entered “the chase”. Eventually this consumes him; K.’s “chase” after his innocence devours all of his time and energy. In his diary entry, Kafka says that the “chase takes the direction away from human-kind”. K., since he is completely devoted to proving his innocence, travels in this direction away from society. His professional and social life suffers, as does his sanity. 

Struc, Roman, John Yardley, and Charles Bernheimer. Franz Kafka (1883-1983): his craft and thought. Waterloo, Ont., Canada: Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, 1986. Print.